A majority of Icelanders will block an accord with the U.K. and the Netherlands on depositor guarantees, a Capacent Gallup poll published by RUV showed, Bloomberg reported. The poll showed 52 percent of voters will reject the bill in the April 9 referendum, compared to 54.8 percent in a Frettabladid newspaper poll published earlier today. Forty-eight percent of voters will support the pact on April 9, Capacent’s poll showed, compared to 45.2 percent of voters in the Frettabladid poll.

Portugal’s caretaker government has said it will submit a formal written request for a financial rescue package to the European Commission on Thursday, becoming the third eurozone country to seek a bail-out after Greece and Ireland, the Financial Times reported. Pedro Silva Pereira, minister for the cabinet, said the request would take into account the fact that Portugal was being administered by a caretaker government until a general election on June 5.

Portugal's request for a bailout from the European Union hasn't so far rattled its neighbor Spain, which was able to sell bonds comfortably on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported. In a sharp shift from last year, when financial bailouts of Greece and Ireland shook the whole euro-zone periphery, the stability of Spain's borrowing costs suggests markets currently don't believe the country will be the next domino to fall. In a closely watched auction on Thursday, the Spanish government sold €4.130 billion of three-year bonds, offering around 3.57% interest.

Portugal’s caretaker government gave in to market pressures on Wednesday and joined Greece and Ireland in seeking an emergency bailout. The decision came after the government was forced to pay much higher rates to sell more debt, the International Herald Tribune reported. José Sócrates, Portugal’s prime minister, said in a televised address Wednesday night that he had requested aid from the European Commission after recognizing that borrowing costs had become unsustainable. “I had always considered outside aid as a last recourse scenario,” he said.

Ireland's banking regulator said it will take years for investors to regain confidence in the country's banks, which in the meantime are likely to remain reliant on funding from central banks, The Wall Street Journal reported. "It's going to take a while before there's an Irish bond issue" from a bank, said Matthew Elderfield, the head of financial regulation at the Central Bank of Ireland, in an interview in London on Wednesday. "We may get some market interest in a couple years' time." Mr.

Eircom chief executive Paul Donovan told staff yesterday that he will not get a bonus of €4 million in 2012, as was reported by a Sunday newspaper last weekend, the Irish Times reported. But Mr Donovan made no comment on whether a two-year, voluntary pay cut of 10 per cent that he accepted in 2009 would be reversed in July, as was previously agreed with the company. The media report had angered many staff in Eircom, who only last week agreed to accept the terms of a wide-ranging restructuring plan aimed at reducing labour costs by €92 million.

Portugal is holding talks with the European Union on how to meet its immediate borrowing needs as its banks press Lisbon to seek a bridging loan until a new government can negotiate a bail-out deal, the Financial Times reported. Portuguese banks have been the biggest purchasers of the government’s bonds in recent months, but bankers said some lenders were now reluctant to buy more sovereign debt. The country’s long-term credit rating was downgraded by Moody’s by one notch to Baa1 on Tuesday.

José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, said yesterday reducing the bailout debt rate for Ireland and Greece was not only fair but would assure sustainability of the debt, the Irish Times reported. Costs which would be “very, very difficult for our Greek or Irish citizens to pay” could not be imposed. Mr Barroso said all member states must express solidarity but also shoulder responsibility.

Three years into Spain's economic crisis, the worst could still be to come for the country's ailing banks as they grapple with falling profits and rising bad debt, the central bank chief warned Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported. "2011 will be another year of adjustment, and for the banking sector, it will be one of the worst," Bank of Spain Governor Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez said at a conference. Mr.

German state-controlled lender Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, or LBBW, will likely kick off the sale of its German residential property portfolio worth about EUR1.3 billion ($1.8 billion) this summer, a spokesman for the bank said, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The LBBW spokesman said the bank "is preparing the sale of LBBW Immobilien's residential real estate, as required by the EU." However, a final decision over the details of the sale "will likely take until the summer of 2011," considering legal aspects and the complexity of the issue involved, the LBBW spokesman said.